Snow in Joshua Tree National Park! 
Who would have thought? I know it does snow there every 5 or 6 years, but it's been well over 20 years I think since I have been out there in the snow. It was a fun and fast overnight trip. As I already posted, I ran up there in time to catch the sunset with a blanket of wildflowers at the southern entrance of Joshua Tree. Once it got dark I drove up to camp in Jumbo Rocks so that I could shoot this rock and Juniper under a different blanket, this time being a blanket of snow.
I had driven up to 29 Palms to have a hot meal, before heading to the campsite. Getting in there about 10pm. I woke up about 2:30am and looked out side to see that while I had slept it had snowed and everything was covered under several inches of snow. It was still actively snowing, so I laid back down to sleep, but it was futile and at 3am I looked again and the snow had lessened and I was starting to see some stars. Well, with that I got up as I didn't want to waste the stars.
I carefully walked up to this location, in addition to not wanting to slip on any ice under the boulders, I didn't want to leave any tracks that would be in any future shots. This one is not my first shot, I did take the traditional view of this location first, but I also liked back up and to the side a bit to include the whole large boulder and rock that sits to one side, I think it has a cool shape to it. Later I will post the traditional view after I get it processed.
One word on this, the moon was now out since the clouds had opened up, and it was even brighter then it had been when I was out there with Kyle 4 days earlier. So it made for very bright shooting conditions. Most of my shots were at ISO 400 and 6 to 8 seconds. I did darken this down some to hopefully give some feeling that this was shot at night, but it's hard to get it too dark without looking too muddy.
And I made a major goof on this. When I set my focus, I was off just a bit so that the in focus area doesn't really start until the rock spire. So the Juniper was soft and the rock in front of it was soft. I didn't realize that until after I had gotten back home. So the very first thing I did was to convert a couple of the raws and bring them into Photoshop to see if I could sharpen those soft parts enough to make them look sharp without looking weird. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I was able to do it. No telling when I would get the next snowfall out there, so the last thing I wanted to do was blow it by having the foreground out of focus.
So here is my first one, all comments are welcome.
Jim
Who would have thought? I know it does snow there every 5 or 6 years, but it's been well over 20 years I think since I have been out there in the snow. It was a fun and fast overnight trip. As I already posted, I ran up there in time to catch the sunset with a blanket of wildflowers at the southern entrance of Joshua Tree. Once it got dark I drove up to camp in Jumbo Rocks so that I could shoot this rock and Juniper under a different blanket, this time being a blanket of snow.
I had driven up to 29 Palms to have a hot meal, before heading to the campsite. Getting in there about 10pm. I woke up about 2:30am and looked out side to see that while I had slept it had snowed and everything was covered under several inches of snow. It was still actively snowing, so I laid back down to sleep, but it was futile and at 3am I looked again and the snow had lessened and I was starting to see some stars. Well, with that I got up as I didn't want to waste the stars.
I carefully walked up to this location, in addition to not wanting to slip on any ice under the boulders, I didn't want to leave any tracks that would be in any future shots. This one is not my first shot, I did take the traditional view of this location first, but I also liked back up and to the side a bit to include the whole large boulder and rock that sits to one side, I think it has a cool shape to it. Later I will post the traditional view after I get it processed.
One word on this, the moon was now out since the clouds had opened up, and it was even brighter then it had been when I was out there with Kyle 4 days earlier. So it made for very bright shooting conditions. Most of my shots were at ISO 400 and 6 to 8 seconds. I did darken this down some to hopefully give some feeling that this was shot at night, but it's hard to get it too dark without looking too muddy.
And I made a major goof on this. When I set my focus, I was off just a bit so that the in focus area doesn't really start until the rock spire. So the Juniper was soft and the rock in front of it was soft. I didn't realize that until after I had gotten back home. So the very first thing I did was to convert a couple of the raws and bring them into Photoshop to see if I could sharpen those soft parts enough to make them look sharp without looking weird. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I was able to do it. No telling when I would get the next snowfall out there, so the last thing I wanted to do was blow it by having the foreground out of focus.
So here is my first one, all comments are welcome.
Jim
